Written by: Andrue (Voupie)

I would like to start out this piece by saying this is not exactly an article. While there is a written piece, this is primarily a museum of sorts, a gallery. Even that term is used reluctantly as you are encouraged to steal and spread these images far and wide across the internet.

Anywho, when I first started making my own website and exploring the old web, I found something really interesting. The past generations had inspired this "old web "aesthetic, and provided us with the stepping stones to achieve it ourselves. This included formatting tips, the general layout of personal websites of times passed, and the graphics. Now, there are a few different kinds of graphics on an old web website, including:

Buttons, which looked like this:

Stamps, which looked like this:

GIFs, which we still today, usually I see on Twitter or online chatrooms. I think what we have is cool, but we can do something way cooler.

There have been so many times where I was on an old web website and I found some of their graphics and just took them all to use on my website. We don't really make them how we used to, and that's the reason why I feel like I have to go looking in the past to find something that meets my standards and invokes the proper amount of nostalgia, humor, or emotion. I think it is our duty now to create a new set of GIFs for the new generations. I will be making a range of different images to fill this duty. This will include reaction, GIFs, cute transparent GIFs, and anything else that I see fit.

I would like to remind you that these are all free to take, and while you don't need to give credit, it is always welcome. If you scroll past the gallery, you could learn a little bit more about the creation process, and the kind of things I wanted to go for.

When it came to making and selecting GIFs, I wanted to do a few things. First of all, I wanted to create a feeling of nostalgia that wasn't too on the nose. I also want something that's actually usable. I don't wanna make something that is meant to be shared, and nobody wants to use it. While that might ultimately end up being the case, I'll try to prevent it while I can.

Additionally, something that was really important to me was incorporating a wide variety of languages. I, in particular, want to create more Spanish GIFs. Typically all that I can find online are GIFs in English or Japanese. The old web was a really cool place full of diverse people, identities, and content. That being said, it did not fully showcase that diversity of real internet users. I want to give a voice to the people of color that didn't see themselves in the vibrant online communities of days past. People of color are everywhere, queer people are everywhere, and not everybody speaks English. Let's remember that.